


What U Think It Should Be

by helena_s_renn



Series: Love and Affection [2]
Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: Feels, Inspired by concert footage, M/M, Switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-30 00:50:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12642774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: Sometimes just looking at his man performing is too much, and Joe can't handle it. So Sav handles him."There was just that edge to him where the past and present intersected."





	What U Think It Should Be

**Author's Note:**

> The inspiration for this fic can be found here on youtube, starting at 1:05:50:
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3zzvM6s0lmA
> 
> There are other versions of this show, but none of them are cut/edited quite the same. I wanted you to see it like I did.
> 
> Many thinks to Christian.Howe for _understanding_ \- and everything else beta-wise. Any remaining mistakes are mine.

-2013  
(told in Joe's POV)

When the song starts, he's far above me, up on the drum riser. Doing his thing, his alter-ego rock star thing, he and Phil and Viv still hot enough to keep this train rolling. That's not to discount what I bring, nor Rick. I'm the catalyst and Rick's the glue. But for those who need their eye candy...

The stage is solid, has to be to accommodate us running and jumping all over it, but I swear I can feel the minor vibrations of each step of his descent. The verse is over, on to the bridge. The first time I sing, _"Can you handle it?"_ he's there, close behind me on my right, my peripheral vision telling me that he's facing the back of the house dead on like I am. Fellowship. Solidarity. _"It's just another night."_ Oh yes it is, yeah.

And I dare not look in his direction during the chorus. All four of us on the front line sing like we're dying over our words. On the far end, Viv is all but howling four syllables of Whoa, but all - who - I'd see is closer, much closer to me.

How do you describe the exact tilt of your man's head, how his long hair frames a face that echoes its former glory and is all the more heart-stopping for it, the way his eyelids fall closed so sweetly and his cheeks lift and round because you know he's loving on you so hard in the music that emanates from his mouth? I can't look over, keep my stare on the audience - I wouldn't be able to stop every emotion from being broadcast and he's being damn obvious enough.

Second verse, he comes closer yet, so close I can feel the increasing heat of him as he circles around behind me. It's a slow orbit, each of his steps deliberate. At the end of it we stand united, swaying, slow dancing in place, almost shoulder to shoulder, side by side. I pour everything I have into the mike. He's got that big black beast of his slung low enough that both bare arms are extended fully, shoulders squared and braced. _"Can you handle it?"_ Sometimes, like now, I can barely handle it.

He relents, moves off - slowly. The configuration of his body tells me he's behind the mike stand left for him on that side, ready to open his throat for me again. Memories of times backstage nearly bring me to my knees. It's absolute crack that this song was written about some long-ago fling, one of those birds that couldn't comprehend the line between sex and love. There's no such delineation for us; if there was, it eroded and dissolved over time. He's my ley lines and the lines on my face and my line in the sand, my Rosetta stone, my curse-breaker, key to my crusty old heart; the heat and hunger between us is the only language I'll ever need.

During the solo I retreat to the wall of speakers because I need a break, I can barely handle the need to just be still and silent next to him - or rip his clothes off - but we have a job to do. From there, I can watch him strut around and fly sideways across the stage like he does. Only, he's stationary, parallel to me, five metres away, not looking at me but turned so he's playing with his body directed toward mine and I can't move, am not allowed to move, until he releases my attention. When I step forward to the edge of the pit to resume, he makes his way to the front again to back me up, and I take off up the runway to show them how it's done.

The spell is broken after that; we have to wrap the song and the show pre-encore. Back in the day, two minutes was enough: One would unleash, one would turn around, half a dozen rough thrusts and explode from all the built-up, pent-up energy and then stumble back out under the lights. How many times did I sing Sugar leaking _his_ , or Rock of Ages knowing we'd just done _that_ , still feeling him tight around every inch of my dick?

Now we're old, and it'd take me two minutes just to get my pants off. He's pretty much given up on against the wall unless he wants to kill his back, and bending him over isn't so easy for me now either, although we can still make that tour bus rock if the mood strikes.

We'll just have to wait till we can take our time. After that performance on stage, I have quite a good idea of what I need. As we file off, I sling an arm around his neck and tell him, adding, "Can you handle it?"

He replies, blinking, "Yea-eah." I can't surprise him anymore, but his acceptance of my quirks is worth it. Squirming away, staying off each other in public by long-standing if tacit mutual agreement, he changes shirts under my side-eyes. Damn him in that fucking skin-tight leather. We both know what song is next.

At long last it's over and we've fulfilled all the after and after-after obligations. We get to live in this hotel during our run, part of the contract just like letting the Vegas folks add 'Viva' to our highest-selling album's name as a show title. There's only a few gigs left, and then we're adrift in the sea of our own making again. I don't know why it got so intense on stage tonight. Maybe our man-cycles coincided. There was just that edge to him where the past and present intersect.

I'm naked in the shower, pruny, wondering if I read him wrong or if he got sidetracked when he slips in behind me. He's still got his stage make-up on, highlighter sparkle on his lids. Why that makes me so hot for him, I can't say. The hard prodding against the back of my leg tells me to finish my washing. We drip all the way to my bed and then he's all over the back of me, just like I'd asked.

I never did make it easy for him; he knows I gotta be taken down and _handled_. If it requires every ounce of his strength to get me down on him, and under him tonight, neither of us complain. We're both exhausted anyway and I just need to feel it. There's no better way than this, with him clutching my hip, stroking me, pounding into me.

But, it shouldn't only be about me, should it? He'd say he prefers it face-to-face where not just our bodies but our selves are laid bare and open to each other. Well, he got that from me earlier without even touching me, and he knows it. 

Even though he's nearing his end, he still stops, buried deep, when I say his name.

"Wha-?"

"Let me see you, please, I gotta... gotta see you..."

"Yeah... you look at me when you make me come." It's a command and decades of repetitive narration in one sentence. He's on his back now, chest shiny and heaving, belly trembling, eyes wide and wild to say he needs this as bad as I do. When I go to do a too-fast prep, he's already open. When the fuck did that happen? Over 50 and I have to hold myself down not to go off like a young, over-excited lad. He still does that to me. That he got himself ready for me says he knew what I was going to need: to take him like we did back at the beginning, when all that mattered was who screamed the loudest, shot the farthest, gave the best head, boned the deepest and fastest or rode the same. 

Then it's flesh on flesh, flesh in flesh again and yet so different this way. We're men: there's hair and balls, muscle and musk. We soar, our bodies sing, I grind out my love for him in voice and body. How he holds me, cradles me, carries me, arms and legs around me laced with cries of sin and blasphemy. No one could ever get us to shut up when we're gone in the throes of it and this time's no different. 

You should see him when he comes. The world shifts on its axis when he pulls me in, arches, flushed to the navel with thighs strained wide, and my world erupts in white. Always so much. Hot. Salty-smoky. He moans through a slack mouth and bared teeth like it's being ripped from him. 

Mine is the anticlimax, though it often wrings more out of him. I happily fall asleep with his cream all over me - maybe it'll help smooth my lizard skin.

It's funny... Up on stage, all the pain and pleasure and love, it's part cerebral, part hormonal. In bed, the same things are purely physical. And while I never want to box us in, that's how I think it should be.

 

Fin.


End file.
